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Documented increases in STDs among high-risk populations in San Francisco, including men who have sex with men (MSM) who use the Internet to find anonymous sex partners, did not lead to a widely expected synergetic rise in HIV incidence. In fact, using a detuned assay test, the same public health officials and researchers who uncovered the syphilis increase among MSM found that HIV incidence was leveling off for the past several years despite the STD increases.

Health officials also found that safe-sex behavior increased since 1998 among HIV-negative MSM who reported having sex with an HIV-positive partner. So while sexual risk behavior is increasing, MSM are having sex with partners whom they know have the same serostatus, investigators concluded. One hypothesis is that MSM are serosorting through the Internet-- the same venue that makes it more likely they will increase their sexual risk behaviors.

"If persons who are the same HIV serostatus are in the same networks so that positives are having unprotected sex with positives and negatives with negatives, then you could see an increase in syphilis transmission without an increase in HIV transmission," noted Willi McFarland, MD, PhD, director of HIV/AIDS Statistics and Epidemiology for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Editor's Note: from Reuters